Pair of Printed Ephemeral Items Relating to the Visit of Prince Napoleon to Boston, September 1861

Order of Exercises at the Musical Festival In Honor of Prince Napoleon and Princess Clothilde, at The Music Hall, on Wednesday, September 25th, 1861, Commencing at 5 o'clock P.M.

[Boston: J.E. Farwell & Co., printers [1861] octavo, 3, [1] pp., printed program. With unused ticket of admission to the Festival, measuring 3 ¾ x 5 inches, rare ephemeral items.

The American visit of Emperor Napoleon II's cousin, Prince Napoleon (nick named Plon Plon), five months after the start of the Civil War, was ostensibly unofficial. But after a disastrous White House meeting with President Lincoln (whom the Prince thought stupid and graceless), Napoleon crossed the Confederate lines to the Virginia headquarters of rebel General G. T. Beauregard, whose cosmopolitan manners were more to his taste. Traveling back to the north before his departure, the Prince's Confederate sympathies were only thinly disguised, though not as manifest as a spurious letter attributed to him in southern newspapers, blaming the War on northern "obstinacy … prodigality and avarice… political fanaticism and egotistical speculations." After his secret meeting with the rebel General, possibly to discuss French support for the rebellion – or even the Emperor's plan to occupy Mexico – the pudgy Prince had to endure this "musical festival" at which a chorus of no less than 1200 Boston school children serenaded him with the Star Spangled Banner.